Wildlife

Socotra cormorant

Socotra cormorants can have breeding colonies and foraging flock populations numbering in the tens of thousands. They breed only on islands in the Middle East, and are threatened by coastal development in the area.

Planet Earth

Aerials explain why the world's largest colony of socotra cormorants nests in the desert.

In a new angle on this bizarre spectacle, the heligimbal's powerful HJ40 lens pulls out ever further to a high wide shot that perfectly illustrates the seabirds' bleak isolation at the edge of the Arabian desert. The mystery of the apparently bizarre choice of nesting site is clarified by satellite imagery that reveals the beneficial effects of local weather patterns.